The Cosmic Dance of Shiva, supreme Hindu god of destruction and creationLike many in the blogosphere, I have expended considerable mental energy in recent years studying and fretting over the various “doomer” scenarios that threaten humanity in the 21st century. There was a time when I found the apparent facts utterly depressing and was convinced that there was no light at the end of the tunnel for mankind – that the future offered nothing but total collapse and devolution. But some time during the past six months or so, and particularly with my recent turn to the “dark side”, I have come to view the doomer…
Category: News Collapse of Society
A Vision of The End
Gaze with me into the mirrors of your Multiversal mind, and see one possible future coming into view…This is not the world your mythmakers promised you — no Disneyland of techno-prosperity and consumer capitalism for all. No, this world is racked by holy wars and ethnic conflicts, Malthusian catastrophes, refugee invasions, eco-anarchy and Millennial insanity. Do you see it? There, in the frontview mirror? Do you see the chaos approaching in the twilight of this, the darkest of all ages?The chaos is descending fastest across the lands of God-drunk Islam. Thirsty Yemen is falling to the soldiers of martyred bin Laden; modernity is in on the…
The Eternal Specter of Fascism
Since I’ve recently been accused of being a fascist (and not for the first time), I did a little self-reflection and concluded that, yes, I probably am that. And so, I suspect, are you, if you are honest with yourself and possess any degree of self-awareness. Allow me to explain… Ever since adolescence I have been acutely aware that our glorious species is, for the most part, a vast troop of self-deluding monkeys who, despite our overgrown neocortexes, are still largely driven by hundred million year old lizard brain impulses. Perhaps I had an advantage over others in perceiving this fact, in that for medical reasons I did…
Imagining the Eco-Matrix
My friends, this may be my final sermon here at TDR, my ultimate attempt to explain why anyone concerned with the fate of humanity and our planetary biosphere should be in favor of continuing our civilization’s technological push forward, rather than wishing for its collapse. Ready?The key point is this: continued technological progress will enable us to transition to a post-industrial age — to reduce our global ecological footprint by localizing manufacturing, harnessing eco-friendly energy sources and moving more of our activity into “virtual reality”. To see this, let’s try to imagine a different world: the world of the “Eco-Matrix”……
Morning of the Magicians: Magical Thinking for a New Age
“I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.” –J. B. S. HaldaneRationalists of a certain literal, materialistic mindset look at the world’s current state and its future trajectory, crunch the numbers and conclude that, with a high probability, we’re all doomed. It’s an understandable conclusion, too, if you project current capabilities and priorities linearly into the future. But what is missing from their equations — from their entire worldview, in fact — is the element of what I’ll call, for lack of a…
Road Warriors: Nomadic Neo-Barbarians of the New Dark Age
In my last post I gave some practical tips for aspiring Neo-Barbarians that were focused on fortifying your homestead against Imperial interlopers and marauding bandits. In this installment I’d like to present another option for would-be Neo-Barbs which may turn out to be an even more appropriate (and fun) adaptation to the 21st century milieu of climate chaos, resource scarcity and global guerrilla-dom: hitting the road.I expect this century to mark the beginning of a new Migration Period like the one that reset the ancient world starting in the 4th century A.D. As discussed in my…
Free State-ers Not Welcome Here Says NH Rep
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Family Farmers to Travel to Washington, D.C. to Take on Monsanto
Image Source Activist Post Dozens of family farmers, Plaintiffs in the landmark lawsuit Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association et al v. Monsanto, will travel from across America to Washington, D.C. next week to take on Monsanto and demand the right to farm. They will attend the January 10th Oral Argument in the Appeal of Dismissal to be aired before the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. A Citizen’s Assembly in support of family farmers at 10am in Lafayette Square will coincide with the beginning of the Oral Argument inside the court room. “Our farmers want nothing to do with Monsanto,” declared Maine certified organic seed farmer, Jim Gerritsen, President of lead Plaintiff Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association. “We are not …
60 Facts That Prove The American Middle Class is Being Wiped Out
Michael Snyder, Contributor Activist Post The middle class in the United States is being systematically destroyed, and nobody is doing much of anything to stop it. Our incomes are shrinking, our share of the income pie is at an all-time low, our jobs are being sent overseas, debt burdens have soared to unprecedented heights and millions of formerly middle class Americans have fallen into poverty. America once had the largest and most vibrant middle class that the world has ever seen, but now it is rapidly being shredded. Unfortunately, this is particularly true for younger Americans. Today, families that have a head of household that is under the age of 30 have a poverty rate of 37 percent. That…
House Resolution Introduced to Remove Presidential Term Limits
Dees Illustration Activist Post Is one member of Congress attempting to make Obama a dictator? Congressman José Serrano (D-NY) introduced House Joint Resolution 15 which would remove the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as President. H.J.Res.15 titled “Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the twenty-second article of amendment, thereby removing the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as President”was referred to the House Judiciary Committee on January 4th. The Twenty-second amendment sets the term limit for the office of the President to two four-year terms. The Twenty-second Amendment reads: Section 1. No person shall be elected to the office of the President more …
California county postpones hearing on request to buy a surveillance drone for law enforcement
Sheriff Gregory Ahern Madison Ruppert, Contributor Activist Post Alameda County Sheriff Gregory Ahern has postponed public discussion about his request to purchase a drone for “intelligence and information sharing and dissemination,” claiming it has nothing to do with the concerns raised by privacy advocates. Interestingly, law enforcement agencies are already benefiting from the data captured by military drones in the United States and indeed drones are being used around the United States by both law enforcement and the military with disturbing frequency. Even the National Guard uses drones in the United States and the justifications sound eerily similar to those offered by Ahern and others, such as “wildfire surveillance.” While Ahern recognized that intelligence and information sharing and dissemination is the reason…
Technocratic Fiat Implosions and the Battle Over Gold
Susanne Posel, Contributor Activist Post In 2011, the technocrats devised a scheme, with the assistance of Hans Hoogervorst, appointed chairman of the International Accounting Standards Board, that Europe would be included in IFRS9, a new rule that eliminates mark-to-market accounting of sovereign debt from the European Central Bank’s balance sheets. When mark-to-market practices were installed in 2009, it led to a short-term market recovery, which presented a false positive as banking institutions no longer had to provide capital to promote long-term financial stability. In the Euro-Zone, banks can now conduct business as sovereign debt becomes the only path that can be taken by countries being affected by the technocratic takeover. Under the guise of creating jobs, Ben…
Meet Zbigniew Brzezinski, Conspiracy Theorist
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Can Trillion Dollar Coins Pay Off National Debt?
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Health science journalism–don’t just blame the journalists for getting it so wrong
Coffee is good for you, coffee is bad for you. Red wine will save your life, red wine will kill you. Low carb diet is the best, low carb diet is dangerous. Most major news outlets feature health science news with information designed to help us choose healthier lives. The problem is, much of it seems contradictory, headlines seem designed to scare us into attention rather than inform us. It’s ironic: the fear expressed by particularly the younger generation about food, pharmaceuticals, lifestyle choices and the like is matched only by their extreme distrust in the media. In other words, it seems the attention-desperate media have been successful in creating a state of fear, even while losing the public’s trust. …
Is Instagram TooLateagram?
It seems a bit ironic that an iconic brand with “instant” in its name may be severely impacted in crisis response by offering “too little, too late.” ”Too late” is now the classic story of much crisis response and may well describe the latest attempt of Instagram co-founder and CEO Kevin Systrom to quell the storm and restore trust. The good news is that he has come forward with the appropriate response regarding the attempt to change Terms of Service language to allow the photo-sharing service to sell users photos. His first attempt was weak at best: in it he said basically, legalese is hard…
Healthy food is on the table for 2013
You might have noticed my “growing” interest in food related issues. Partly a result of having some clients in agriculture, partly having some fairly strong opinions about the scare tactics activists and the media are using around food safety for their benefit–and to the potential harm of others. Partly probably because two years ago I moved onto a small farm and am greatly enjoying my own foods from great beef to fresh eggs to a garden loaded with more than we can eat. The food industry is in crisis. The crisis occasionally erupts into full-blown, high profile battles like pink slime and the GMO name calling attack on Cheerios. I&#…
Instagram–is this the dumbest move ever? (and it gets worse)
I’m following with interest the online hubbub over instagram. The short of it is Instagram, owned by Facebook, changed their Privacy Policy and Terms of Service to include their right to sell the images on Instagram to anyone without any compensation. Not sure if they were going to let you know first, or just sell them. This is not sitting well with the digital lynch mob. I’ve already seen major organizations or industry groups sending emails out to their broad lists encouraging any Instagram account holders to immediately delete their accounts. The hashtag #boycottinstagram is going nuts–info on how to delete existing …
An unspeakable tragedy beyond words
Like you probably, I’ve thought much and grieved much over the unspeakable events in Connecticut. But my reaction was to studiously avoid the media as much as I could. My phone kept going with the quiet alarm of another AP mobile update–but soon I stopped looking at those, too. I didn’t turn to twitter to see what was going on. And I turned to no news channels to get the latest. I thought I may be the only person in America to have that response, but I noted Bill Boyd in his blogpost reacted similarly, even if he indulged in early twitter monitoring. I&#…
First Shell, now ExxonMobil–the oil industry haters strike low blows
Shell Oil was attacked by Greenpeace and the Yes Men back in early summer in a sophisticated, cynical social media strategy. One of the key features was creating videos and a website that looked so much like the real Shell ads and website that it was bound to confuse. I predicted that this would not be the last of this sort of campaign. Sure enough, now ExxonMobil is being targeted in this particularly dark and cynical ad-lookalike. It’s called “Exxon hates your children.” It does seem to have the almost redeeming qualities that the anti-Shell campaign …
GMO controversy now hits General Mills and Cheerios hard
As if to illustrate the point I was making about the coming controversies around GMO foods, General Mills looks to have lost control of its Facebook page over GMO concerns. An activist organization has “outed” Cheerios as having GM ingredients resulting in what appears to be Cheerio’s and General Mills losing control of their Facebook page. Curious about what horrible, baby-killing ingredient that General Mills was sneaking into their breakfast cereal, I tried to get some info about the genetically modified ingredients causing all the stir. Sadly, the only thing I could find was all-out fear tactics without any real information or evidence of…
GMO–salmon in headlines now, but this is just a start
The FDA is stalling approval of a GMO salmon being produced by AquaBounty–delays that may force the company out of business. This, despite the FDA finding in 2010 that the fish are safe and pose little harm to natural fish or the environment. GMO, genetically modified organisms, specifically food and crops is very controversial. Proposition 37, a ballot initiative in California that would have required labeling for GMO food went down to defeat. Backers accused Monsanto, the favorite target of anti-production food activists, for funding a campaign to defeat it. (I’m sure if it had passed, the backers would have proclaimed…
What’s Up For 2013? “We simply do not know” but:
Gerald Epstein Prognostication is a fool’s errand…maybe that’s why we economists like to do so much of it, especially this time of year. John Maynard Keynes was no fool, but even he couldn’t help making forecasts. Keynes famously predicted, for example, that over time there would be such abundance of capital that investments would yield close to 0{660353129f8d892044c993645a1c75194301fec6786a7f617c15adde0b0011e9}, bringing about the “euthanasia of the rentier.” Though interest rates are now quite low, the rentiers are still, unfortunately, going strong. Keynes’ willingness to engage in such forecasts is all the more interesting because, better than most economists – then and now — Keynes understood the pitfalls of economic prediction. As emphasized by my colleague James Crotty, among others, central to Keynes’…
Honoring Alice Amsden and Albert Hirschman: Trailblazers in Development and Political Economics
Gerald Epstein On the last day of 2012, we note the passing of two brilliant economists who have done much to contribute a broad and deep understanding of economic history and institutions. Triple Crisis has written of the passing, life, and work of Alice Amsden, the brilliant development economist from MIT, who contributed enormously to our understanding of technology and industrial policy to the dramatic rise of Asian economies, among others. We also recognize here Albert Hirschman, the brilliant political economist, who crossed disciplinary boundaries and had a deep commitment to learning from economic history and political institutions. Hirschman died on December 11, 2012 at the age of 97. According to the New York Times, Hirschman learned the …
The IMF’S Institutional View On Capital Flows: Back To The Future
Yilmaz Akyuz As the crisis in advanced economies (AEs) has laid bare the deficiencies of unfettered financial markets and developing countries (DCs) have started exploring ways and means of counteracting destabilizing capital inflows triggered by quantitative easing and historically low interest rates in major AEs through various measures, the IMF has been compelled to reconsider its position on capital account liberalization. After two years of pondering it has now come up with an Institutional View, discussed in its Executive Board and endorsed by most Directors. It is meant to guide Fund advice to members and Fund assessments in the context of surveillance, while it is also reiterated that…
Econ4: Statement on Healthcare
We are economists who think that the economy should serve people, the planet and the future. The United States ranks first in the world in health care spending per person, but only 45th in life expectancy. The average American sees a doctor less often than the average Canadian, the average Briton, or the average resident of most industrial democracies. The average life expectancy of white Americans without a high school degree has fallen since 1990 by three years for men and five years for women. This paradoxical combination of first-class costs and second-rate performance is a result of a multi-…
Stephen Resnick, professor of economics at UMass-Amherst, dies at age 74
On January 2nd, we lost a brilliant economist, Stephen Resnick, one of the founding members and a cornerstone of the heterodox Economics Department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Steve, a devoted and fabulous teacher, touched the lives of hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students over his career. Steve, along with his colleague Richard Wolff, worked tirelessly for decades to transform Marxian Economics and influenced the researching and teaching of scores of students. He will be sorely missed. Here we reprint an early obituary, written by one of his former students from Umass. -Gerald Epstein Greg Saulmon, writing in The Republican: Jan 3rd, 2013, Stephen A. Resnick, a professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts who won the school’s distinguished teaching award and is…
The Return of Austerity-The View From Africa
Leonce Ndikumana Following the intense debate on the fiscal deficit during the U.S. presidential campaign, fiscal consolidation continues to dominate discussions in policy circles and academia. The large fiscal deficit in the U.S. and sovereign debt woes in the Eurozone are used by proponents of the “small government” mantra as a means to advance the belief that fiscal consolidation is the only way to bring the economy back to sustained growth and full employment. While the arguments are not new, the current circumstances of a global recession and a slow recovery in the U.S. make it somehow easier for …
What We’re Reading and Writing
What We’re Reading Frank Partnoy and Jesse Eisenger, What’s Inside America’s Banks and Should More Bankers Be in Prison Bretton Woods Project, The World Bank and Industrial Policy: Hands on or Hands off Michael Lim and Joseph Lim, Asian Initiatives at Monetary and Financial Integration Engelbert Stockhammer and Ozlem Oneran, Wage-Led Growth What We’re Writing C.P. Chandrasekhar, India’s Triumph in Rice Matias Vernengo, On the State of Macroeconomics Leonce Ndikumana, Austerity: A View From Africa Gerald Epstein, Rich Should Be Happy With Cliff Deal
Solving Emerging Debt Crises
Martin Khor The issue of foreign debt has made a major comeback. This is due to the crisis in Europe, in which many countries had to seek big bailouts to keep them from defaulting on their loan payments. Before this, debt crises have been associated with African and Latin American countries. In 1997-99, three East Asian countries also joined the indebted countries’ club. This year, European countries, notably Germany, insisted that private creditors share the burden of resolving the Greek crisis. They had to take a “haircut” of about half, meaning that they would be repaid only half the amount they were…